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My Quiet Den

@bollylion

The world is a little too loud.
20s/Black asexual/Autistic

“This is a tapestry I made myself! I just finished it!” 

“…. this is…. big.”

“Eighty feet long, ten high, in forty panels! It was originally going to be sixty feet, but then the Thomas Malory Arthuriana got big and I had to put more stuff in.” 

“… Malory published in the fifteenth century.” 

“Do you have any idea how long it takes one person to embroider eight thousand square feet of tapestry?” 

“You’ve had a lot of free time in the last eight hundred years, haven’t you?” 

“Not once I took up embroidery as a hobby, no!” 

“Want to see my stalagmite cultivation work?”

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It is incredibly important to train yourself to have your first instinct be to look something up.

Don't know how to do something? Look it up.

See a piece of news mentioned on social media? Look it up.

Not sure if something is making it to the broader public consciousness, either because you don't see it much or you see people saying nobody is talking about it? Look it up.

Don't know what a word means? Look it up.

It will make you a better reader and a better writer, but it will also just make you more equipped to cope with the world.

So often, I see people talking about something as though it is the first time anyone has ever acknowledged it, when I've been reading reports about it on the news for months or years. Or I see someone totally misinterpreting an argument because they clearly don't know what a word means--or, on the other hand, making an argument that doesn't make sense because they aren't using words the right way.

Look things up! Check the news (the real news, not random people on social media)! Do your research! You (and the world) will be better for it.

look it up FROM A REAL SOURCE

Not AI

do not trust the overview at the top of the search window. confirm it with a real source by a human before you decide you have all the info you need

people talk about how we need to bring back "don't feed the trolls" rhetoric for modern internet ragebait and I agree but also I think the most useful thing from the Old Internet that I miss is LURKING

be a lurker. just read things and think about them without feeling the need to weigh in or call out or disseminate everything you encounter. it's so nice and so freeing and it's a good way to learn things.

I have frequently regretted getting involved in shit that didn't involve me online but you know what I've never regretted doing? Lurking. literally lurk moar

Let me tell you a story.

I am an archeologist. I specialize in a somewhat obscure but by no means boring or meaningless Neolithic culture in Germany.

It has a Wikipedia page. A well curated, surprisingly extensive Wiki page that encapsulates all the important information about the culture, including literature references for further research.

One day, we asked Chat GPT about this culture. W were curious which details it would get wrong.

ALL OF THEM, except for the fact that it's a culture in present day Germany.

It didn't even get the chronological time frame wrong and called it a celtic culture.

When we told it it's wrong, it came at us with made up literature sources. Literally made up. It took two well known German archeologist who weren't even active at the same time, added a year - both were already dead - and sold that as source.

And it LITERALLY would only have had to quote Wikipedia to get everything right.

THAT is how unbelievably shitty and wrong all those AIs are.

They are making shit up. They are not sourcing information, they're just slapping words together by their most like relative occurance.

Do not trust ChatGPT or any other so-called AI ever.

may 2026 bring us closer to a Palestine liberated from zionist occupation, and a Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan free from proxy exploitation. May 2026 see more people gain the courage to make the world a little better than before. May we all remember to tend seeds whose trees we may never sit beneath. Consider donating to/sharing The Sameer Project, or Khartoum Aid Kitchen or Focus Congo. All power to all the people. Happy new year.

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